The opening credits tell us that corporations have essentially taken the place of countries and decisions that have global impact are often made by a single man - a hired gun. Cusack plays Brand Hauser, a mercenary traveling to Turaqistan (a not so subtle name meant to conjure up American trouble spots in Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan) to help make one of these "decisions." He has been hired to kill a Middle East official that's giving the U.S. a pain in their assets. Turaqiatan, you see, is a country occupied by an American private corporation run by a former US Vice-President (played by Dan Aykroyd). Hauser's cover for this mission is as a trade show producer overseeing the high-profile wedding of Yonica Babyyeah (an almost unrecognizable Hilary Duff), a wildly popular and slutty Mid East pop star who sings about bombings and about how you "blow me... away." Complicating matters is a nosy but sexy reporter (Marisa Tomei) who tries to make Hauser see the error of his ways.
Marisa Tomei plays a reporter in War, Inc. (First Look)
If good intentions and passionate political beliefs were all you needed to make a great satire than War, Inc. would kick butt. But while those things might make for a good op ed piece they do not make for good satire. Co-writers John Cusack, Mark Leyner, and Jeremy Pikser (who also wrote Bullworth ) wear their politics and their film's agenda so blatantly on their sleeves that they forget to take the time to make a good movie. They tell us so much about what we are supposed to think that they leave nothing to the audience to figure out for themselves -- except for maybe pondering where all the laughs went. Plus with Cusack in the lead (and knowing he wrote the role and knowing his political beliefs), we know from the start that Hauser is really a moral guy no matter how much he protests and that the bleeding heart liberal reporter played by Tomei will reform him. There's no mystery, no tension. We know where his character is going from the start. A much more interesting character and satire was played out in the recent Buffalo Soldiers i n which Joaquin Phoenix played an amoral soldier who enters into black marketeering out of boredom. But the satiric assault on the military and the Reagan/Bush agenda was savage, and we were never quite sure whether we liked Phoenix' character or not. The ambiguity was much more effective than the transparency of Cusack's Hauser.
From the first frame of War, Inc. we know everything the film wants to do. The film clearly establishes itself as an Iraqi War farce that takes aim at the corrupt military-industrial complex and privatization of the war. We know immediately that the Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, and Haliburton are the targets. But good satire needs a little more finesse and a little more stealth. Remember that M*A*SH (the Altman film not so much the TV show) was set in the Korean War but was designed to comment on the Vietnam War. Or consider Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove , which is one of the greatest satires of all time, and how carefully constructed that was, how much work was put into making the characters - no matter how ridiculous - seem real on some level. Kubrick made the absurdity of the world he created seem totally plausible and he realized that he didn't need to exaggerate all that much to make his points.
War, Inc. on the other hand has no sense of how to craft a satire. First time director Joshua Seftel doesn't understand the dynamics of making satire effective. He doesn't know when to be subtle and when to be broad. His tone and pacing are almost always off. Too often he seems to be smirking with self-satisfaction about how clever he is. A potentially stinging and funny bit of business -- like a group of chorus girls with prosthetic legs meant to show how American ingenuity can make up for American carelessness - falls flat simply because Steftel doesn't know how best to play the scene. &
War, Inc. does have moments of inspiration. Reporters here are "implanted" not "embedded." What that means is that they get a virtual experience of the war via an implanted computer chip and Disneyland style ride. In addition, sponsor logos appear on tanks and soldiers' uniforms in a clever mix of two very American things - war and corporate sponsorship of sports. And the armored delivery of some dry cleaning was completely unexpected and quite funny. But a film needs more than a few fleeting moments of wit. Plus other things -- like making fun of Mid Easterners as rappers, Yonica's pop star sluttiness and caffeinated soldiers -- just fall painfully flat.
Hilary Duff as Yonica Yeahbaby in War, Inc (First Look)
Cusack is always enjoyable. Here he manages to convey Hauser's weariness of the whole situation and when the time comes to reveal some true emotions, Cusack is up to the task. Hilary Duff is a comic surprise as the trashy pop star that discovers some feminist spunk. Joan Cusack nails her cartoonish character and finds just the right level of exaggeration to make Marsha funny and believable. & Ben Kingsley proves that he is having one strange year. Here he appears as a despicable higher up and he plays the man with cartoonish exaggeration. This oddball performance comes on the heels of his crossed eyed guru in The Love Guru and in advance of his drug-using psychoanalyst in The Wackness. Only Robert Downey Jr. with his roles as an alcoholic principal in Charlie Bartlett, a recovering alcoholic super hero in Iron Man and in blackface in Tropic Thunder seems to rival Kingsley for quirky onscreen work in the year 2008.
Ben Kingsley, here painting by numbers, adds another eccentric performance to his credits for 2008 (First Look)
Steftel packs some action into the film. A fight in a garbage truck make good use of cramped quarters. Then there's a fight in an abandoned mansion that recalls Cusack's hand to hand combat with Benny the Jet in Grosse Pointe Blank, and allows Cusack's Hauser to employ a wine opener as an unusual choice of weapons (of course this is duly telegraphed by Steftel well in advance). But Steftel doesn't know how he wants the violence to affect the audience - should it be gritty and disturbing? Over the top and comic? Or sanitized like you find in most Hollywood blockbusters? His indecision hurts the film and we end up unmoved by the killing and destruction. The end should have the punch and comic yeh-hah zest of Slim Pickens on the missile at the end of Dr. Strangelove . But instead of going out with a comic bang, War, Inc. goes out with a muffled whimper.
War, Inc. (rated R for violence, language and brief sexual material) has some talented people who are capable of much better work than this. I think the main problem is that the message was placed front and center, while things like story, character, and attention to detail got left behind. It's too bad, because there's plenty of material ripe for savage satire out in the world right now, and while I approve of the targets War, Inc. took aim at, I can't say that it ever scored a direct hit.
Just as a footnote: I remember hearing about a recent production of Candide in Europe that stirred controversy because it made references to Bush and American politics in its revisionist take on Voltaire's classic satire. I would have liked to have seen that.
Companion viewing: Dr. Strangelove, M*A*S*H (the movie), Buffalo Soldiers
